--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anonymousff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I ran across an example of this the other day. I read a > book by Ted Strauss, who used to be a TM teacher and > now teaches with the Waking Down people. He describes > two different states which he claims are at the same > "level" of realization, but are experienced quite > differently. These are CC-like experiences. He claims > to have had both. The first he calls something like > "disembodied witness consciousness" and the second he > calls something like "embodied witness consciousness". > He considers the former to be what has traditionally > been understood to be "Self-realization" and the latter > to be much more rare. While he says that the two are > equivalent as a realization of the Self as unbounded > and uninvolved in any and all activity, he considers > the latter to be superior, and the speciality of the > Waking Down approach (naturally he considers it superior, > since he is part of that "tradition"). I actually don't > know what he is talking about, but found the concepts > interesting. Is there anyone on FFL who has enough > experience of Waking Down to comment on this?
I've only been involved with Waking Down for about 16 months, and I'm not drawn to the kind of intellectual analysis of spirituality that makes up most of the traffic on FFL, but I'm pretty much the only WD person on FFL with any regularity. Keeping in mind my own limitations in intellectualizing this sort of thing, what I see as being the difference here is that with TM-style awakening, the awareness is drawn off into transcendent, infinite realms without full awareness of the finite humanness. Whereas with Waking Down, you WILL become aware of EVERY aspect of your internal human dynamic, including ALL the painful shit you've spent your entire life trying to avoid, transcend, or whatever. Is awakening that includes this kind of embodiment "superior"? I'm not in a position to make that judgment. My sense is that it is a broader spectrum, more holistic kind of awakening than what is typically described by the status quo, hypermasculine, awakening traditions, which hold to a spirit-matter split. Alex To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
